How To Drive Like An Idiot

For those of you that know me, I’m fairly easy-going and quiet. For those of you that know me very well, you have come to realize that I have more quirks than Jim Henson has muppets.

Driving brings out the worst in me, mainly because most people are idiots. This is a well-known fact. Idiots breed idiots. There’s no getting around it. For the record, my regular readers are not idiots. You obviously know brilliance when you see it.

Extremely Brilliant.

You’re driving in the left lane, also known as the passing lane, when you get behind Billy Joe Bob who’s driving a pickup truck made sometime before the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. You know the kind of truck I’m talking about. The ones held together by duct tape with a garbage bag for a driver’s side window? Toxic meth lab-like fumes coming out of the exhaust that is scraping along the ground? Yeah…those. You notice he’s going the same speed as the car in the right lane. Part of you wants to jam on that gas pedal and push Billy Joe Bob faster than the fifteen miles per hour he’s currently going. You decided against it mainly for insurance reasons and because you’re afraid the sparks from underneath the truck will ignite the flux capacitor decal he has on his rear window and propel him backwards in time to 1955 where he’ll beat the crap out of George and have his way with Marty’s mom. This would obviously mess up Back to the Future II and III; you silently pat yourself on the back for thinking fourth dimensionally.

Doc Brown approves.

You notice Billy Joe Bob talking to someone next to him, mainly because he’s turned his head towards the passenger seat eighty-three times (you’ve counted) in the last-minute. This irks you even more, not only is Mr. Haney (Google Green Acres) not passing anyone in the passing lane, his brain (which is losing blood quickly) has fixated on the female passenger next to him.

Your only hope is that the car in the right lane speeds up so you can switch lanes and pass Billy Joe Bob, who if I can’t emphasize enough, is in the passing lane. Of course when you look at who is driving the car in the right lane that is running parallel to Billy Joe Bob, you realize that this wonderful plan just went down the crapper. Somehow a four foot three Mrs. Doubtfire climbed into an older Chevy Impala that in its own right could have doubled as a tank in World War One and is driving it. She may not be able to see over the steering wheel, she may be dragging vermin and pieces of her neighbor’s mailbox under her right rear tire, but at least she’s in the correct lane. That’s all that matters right? RIGHT?!

Right? Check.

So there’s a stop light ahead and you “slow down” in response to the red light. Billy Joe Bob pulls up behind another vehicle and you pull up behind him. When the light turns green, and you mean the instant it does, you can hear Billy Joe Bob blasting his horn, telling the car in front of him to go. You’re completely peeved at this point. Dale Earnhardt Jr was going fifteen in a fifty-five and has the nerve to tell someone else to go a millisecond after the light turned green? In the matter of ten seconds, the car in front of Billy Joe Bob quickly outdistances him and you’re back to taking the Jurassic Park tour of Route 28 at a lovely ten miles per hour.

Billy Joe Bob rolls down his window and flicks a cigarette out the window and it’s at times like those you wish you could give the buttwipe a ticket for littering. Instead of rolling the window back up, he proceeds to let his arm hang out the window, followed by his head and his left leg trying to look casual and comfortable.

This lasts for maybe fifteen minutes when he realizes that he’s losing circulation in various parts of his body. Then his head disappears. You back off when his truck slightly swerves left and right. You can see him bent over, shuffling around, probably looking for another cigarette. What could be so important that his eyes are off the road and on the floor of the vehicle looking for something? A-HA! It was a pencil. You know, for those important things you have to write down while you are driving.

Finally, you can see freedom ahead. There’s an exit coming up and Larry the Cable Guy was thoughtful enough to turn on his right blinker. Remember Mrs. Doubtfire and the Panzer tank she’s driving? Still there. So Billy Joe Bob doesn’t speed up and go into the right lane to take the exit. He comes to a complete stop and waits for the right lane to clear. This may take a while, seeing as how it is rush hour. You know when there’s standstill traffic and when you get to the end nothing is there? Billy Joe Bob, that’s why.